IS BRITAIN AWAKE?

Evening Star, Issue 21320, 26 January 1933, Page 2

IS BRITAIN AWAKE?

YEB, SAYS LORD DERBY FACTORIES’ EARLY START “ Will the British manufacturer justify ail the talking and writing and parleying which has been undertaken on his behalf? Personally I am convinced' that he will not let his defenders down.” Thus writes the Right Hon. the Earl of Derby, in a statement circulated by tho Press officer of the British Industries Fair. Eord Derby’s evidence is a tonic for those Empire-lovers who work for the Empire mournfully in a belief that the British manufacturer is a sound slumbercr, instead of working for the Empire confidently in the knowledge that the manufacturing policy of Britain is backed by brains as shrewd as any in either America or Europe. The British mills are responding to new situations, and Lord Derby is convinced that ”if the consuming public does not gain considerably it will be no fault of the British manufacturer. 1 write more immediately of the textile manufacturer, but 1 know that what is true of textiles is true of British industries in general. “ AVhile others were working to clear tho way British textile manufacturers were planning to meet tho new demands. Without waiting for the conclusion of the negotiations which have been and are still going on, some of our manufacturers have been winning back trade believed to have been lost. At tho While City, London, next February, they will show in the textiles section of the British Industries Fair how attentively they have been studying the needs of their markets. “ Next year’s textiles exhibition will bo oven larger than the last, and tho displays of cotton, silk, wool, rayon, and linen will in most cases be based upon recent first-hand market investigations by tho manufacturers concerned. “ Take, for example, China where the present boycott of Japanese goods has given Lancashire her chance. Tho scouts of our cotton industry noted and at once reported tho growing tendency on the part of Chinese women to adopt a European style of dress. Immediately suitable materials were made up into attractive frocks and shipped East, and tho result of mannequin parades in Hongkong, Shanghai, Singapore, Manila, Java, Bangkok, and elsewhere had already brought real grist to northern mills. “ There we have an example of Lancashire’s part in the British Industries Pair. Tho ladies themselves cannot come from the East to the AVhito City, but those who sell to them can; and from all accounts they are going to arrive in strength to see the now materials fashioned into novel stylos to attract their custom.” The development of tho production of furnishing fabrics affords “ further and almost sensational evidence of the readiness with which our manufacturers are responding to the now opportunities being created for them.” During the past six or seven years the business of making furnishing fabrics had gradually dwindled, and it was no easy problem suddenly to supply orders with which mills, for long working precariously, found themselves overwhelmed. At a moment’s notice old methods and old ideas had to be scrapped; new methods and new machinery had to bo studied and introduced. And again hundreds of samples of Jacquard fabrics have been sent to our mills and aflor in any experiments they are now being beautifully woven hero in Britain. “ Scotland was not slow to realise the possibilities of awakening trades, and therd looms for long idle were at once adapted to tho production of this now market, particularly in linen and in jute; indeed, before some of her competitors well knew what was happening, Scotland had outstripped them for both quality and price. “ I am assured that thin vigorous spirit of enterprise is to be noted not only in Lancashire, in Yorkshire, and in Scotland, but in every corner of Britain where they spin or weave. I believe it to be symptomatic of British industry as a whole.”